Infants and other incontinent individuals wear a disposable article such as a disposable diaper to receive and contain urine and other body exudates. Absorbent articles function to contain the discharged materials and to isolate these materials from the body of the wearer and from the wearer's garments and bed clothing. It is generally known in the art that disposable absorbent articles have many different basic designs. Examples of such disposable articles include disposable diapers (for baby and adult) including pull-on diapers and training pants, disposable absorbent pads including sanitary napkins, pantiliners and incontinent pads, disposable underwears, and disposable panties for menstrual use.
The exterior of these disposable absorbent articles is covered with a flexible, liquid impervious member to prevent leakage of absorbed liquids from the disposable absorbent articles. Such a liquid impervious member is generally referred to as a backsheet, and is often constructed from a liquid impervious material such as a polyethylene film, and other outer cover material such as a nonwoven material (if desired). The backsheet constitutes the garment contacting surface of the absorbent articles.
More often than not disposable absorbent articles are incorporating graphics as an ordinary feature. In most instances, these graphics are applied to the backsheet of the product so that the graphics are visible while the product is being worn. The graphics have been printed directly on a component of the backsheet or have been printed on a separate layer, such as a tissue or nonwoven web layer, which is disposed on the backsheet.
There are many reasons to incorporate graphics in disposable absorbent articles. For instance, the graphics can improve the appearance and appeal of the product, to both the wearer and the purchaser. Graphics can also impact the manner in which a disposable absorbent article is used. For example, graphics on disposable diapers can be used by caregivers to amuse and/or educate a child during diapering. Similarly, graphics on disposable training pants can provide educational and motivational mechanisms to facilitate the toilet training process. Graphics on training pants can also serve to increase the child's interest in the product and thereby increase the child's interest in the toilet training process.
Graphics can further be used to indicate when a urine insult has occurred. For instance, it has been known in the art that upon wetting, disposable absorbent articles like diapers have included graphics that appear or disappear to indicate the insult.
Those graphics are typically printed by using conventional printing techniques such as the gravure and flexography technologies which employ a printing plate to print the graphic on the backsheet. The printing plate has ink images for graphics to be printed. The printing plate is typically mounted on a printing cylinder in a printing process. In the printing process, when the cylinder rotates, the printing plate contacts the backsheet to transfer the ink images to the backsheet thereby printing the graphics thereon.
The number of the ink images which can be prepared in the printing plate depends on the sizes of the ink images (or the graphics to be printed), the printing plate and the cylinder. In general, since the size of the backsheet is relatively large, the size of the repeated ink images tends to be large. This means that the total area of the printing plate is occupied by a small number of ink images. As a result, the number of the graphics to be printed is limited in particular for a relatively large component material of disposable absorbent articles such as a backsheet material.
Because of the above reasons, the variety of the graphics printed on conventional disposable absorbent articles within one consumer purchased package is limited. Thus, it is understood that this limitation results in preventing users or consumers from enjoying more variety of graphics in the disposable absorbent articles packed or contained in one package. Further, this limitation has become a restriction in illustrating a complete theme which is typically believed to be helpful to children's education or development.
Consequently, disposable absorbent products which include an unlimited number of graphics that can change appearances upon exposure to liquid are desirable.